I think Big Boned is the third or fourth in a series, msbelle. The conceit was definitely getting a bit stale by then, but the original, Size 12 is Not Fat, is among my favorite in that genre of light fun Meg Cabot fare.

I basically like everything Meg Cabot writes for both children or adults in exactly the way you described, but if you decide to dive in again I think Boy Next Door is probably my favorite. E-mail epistolary style, which isn't everybody's cup of tea, but it works for me.

thanks.

I (once again) read through the new Anne Rice book in one day. And was ready to flip every table in the world over a plot line, but she fixed it. This means I don't have to sulk in a nest of grief made from my velvet frock coats.

I just finished The Essex Serpent, by Sarah Perry, and I really enjoyed it. The prose was beautiful, and I enjoyed the character development.

Posting in here and in literary. I volunteer at my local library putting out donated books and discarded library books for sale. We are kinda over run with juvie and teen books and so if anyone has favorite authors and will cover 50cent pb or $1 hc, I am happy to look through and send you all you want. Also if anyone just in general has a book or books they are looking for, I am happy to keep and eye out.

I'm still volunteering at my local library bookstore too (which carries a bit of everything), and am happy to look around for people.

Can the hivemind help me track down a Halloween-themed short story? I read it a few years ago in an anthology of horror or generally scary stories. It's about a children's scary book author (female, middle aged or elderly) who gives a Halloween reading at a library and then seems to be ambiguously haunted by the unseen fictional mischievous boy character she's famous for. It's told in first person, had a feel that vaguely reminded me of Thomas Ligotti's work. Sadly I cannot recall title, author, or any of the proper names in the story.

I'd thought it might be in one of Ellen Datlow's Year's Best Horror collections, but I haven't been able to turn it up in any of the ones at my library and it would have to be in some book I ran across there at one point.

It doesn't sound familiar, Matt.

It's about a children's scary book author (female, middle aged or elderly) who gives a Halloween reading at a library and then seems to be ambiguously haunted by the unseen fictional mischievous boy character she's famous for. It's told in first person, had a feel that vaguely reminded me of Thomas Ligotti's work. Sadly I cannot recall title, author, or any of the proper names in the story.

That is a Ligotti story. I just read it this last year in his reissued collection with Penguin.

Let me see if I can find the title.

These are the story titles. It's one of these.

Dreams for Insomniacs --The Christmas Eves of Aunt Elise --The Lost Art of Twilight --The Troubles of Dr. Thoss --Masquerade of a Dead Sword: A Tragedie --Dr. Voke and Mr. Veech --Professor Nobody's Little Lectures on Supernatural Horror

Dreams for the Dead --Dr. Locrian's Asylum --The Sect of the Idiot --The Greater Festival of Masks --The Music of the Moon --The Journal of J. P. Drapeau --Vastarien

Grimscribe

--Introduction

The Voice of the Damned --The Last Feast of Harlequin --The Spectacles in the Drawer --Flowers of the Abyss --Nethescurial

The Voice of the Demon --The Dreaming in Nortown --The Mystics of Muelenburg --In the Shadow of Another World --The Cocoons

The Voice of the Dreamer --The Night School --The Glamour

The Voice of the Child --The Library of Byzantium --Miss Plarr

The Voice of Our Name --The Shadow at the Bottom of the World